While Nikki Giovanni’s poem, “Poetry,” came to me recently, it speaks to the oldest part of my teaching soul: the artist I want to be. We often hear that teaching is both a science and an art. I agree. There...

As a former PTA president and mother of two children, I know how jam-packed this time of year can be. After the relatively quiet month of January, each month goes faster and faster, as if we are sliding down a...

A few weeks ago, I had the most amazing conversation with a group of 4th graders. We were revisiting a list of classroom behaviors we made together at the beginning of the school year. We had grouped the list into...

Congratulations to Valerie Sin for winning an autographed copy of Judy Brown’s Simple Gifts! Many thanks to Judy for her generous donation of her book.  We’ll have a drawing for her book, The Art of Spirit of Leadership, later on...

“Notes from the Playground” is a regular feature on our blog. For this series, Greg John generously allows us to share his principal’s reflections and stories from his wonderful book, Notes from the Playground. In these stories, Greg enables us...

For 40 years, the Metropolitan Diary ​has been a cherished section of the NY Times. For the section, everyday New Yorkers write mini-essays that capture odd, fleeting moments of life in the Big City: an encounter on the subway, a...

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Why #NationalPoetryMonth?  Because poetry matters. Why this website? Because what inspires and impassions teachers is worth sharing. Poetry, by slowing us down and focusing our attention, can help us engage in complex truths and potent emotions and yield poignant insights...